Many vehicles today have has been formed. The reason an additional step is required is that the vehicle's doors are made of sheet metal and the trim molding needs to be mechanically attached to the sheet metal. Due to the additional manufacturing step, the cost of the manufacturing process is greatly increased.
Furthermore, when a vehicle's door is painted the entire door, the interior and the exterior, must pass through the paint line. Thus, the interior of the vehicle's door is the same color as the exterior of the door. This is undesirable because the occupant of the vehicle can see the color of the vehicle's exterior on the interior of the vehicle's door. Thus, the manufacturer has to add an additional step in order to paint over, or black out, the exterior color on the interior of the vehicle's door. The portion of the interior of the vehicle's door that has the exterior color that can be seen by the vehicle's occupant and that is covered is known in the industry as a “skunk strip.” This additional manufacturing step to cover the skunk strip also adds additional manufacturing costs.
Therefore it would be ideal to construct a door assembly using composite materials where the trim could be integrated with the door assembly, thus completely eliminating the manufacturing step to mechanically attach the trim to the vehicle's door. In the alternative, it would be ideal to have a door assembly where attachment means for the trim are integrated into the door assembly so that the trim molding can be easily connected to the door assembly. Thus, even though a manufacturing step is needed to attach the trim to the vehicle's door, the manufacturing process is more efficient because the trim more easily attaches to attachment area of the vehicle's door. It would also be ideal to have a door assembly where an upper door assembly is constructed of composite materials that can be connected to a lower door assembly that is made of metal, composite material or a combination of metal and composite material.